Woman’s pain as her former lover kills son

What you need to know:

  • Gideon Kang’ethe, a Standard Six pupil at Kirigu Primary School in Karatina, Nyeri County, was reported missing last Saturday.

“How did I wrong you for you to kill my son?”

That was the question a woman asked her former lover yesterday, moments after he directed detectives to the exact spot inside Mt Kenya Forest where he buried the boy, 11.

On her knees and in tears, Ms Felista Waithera faced her ex-boyfriend Charles Muriuki, the man accused of brutally killing her only son and burying his body in a shallow grave inside the dense rainforest at the base of Mt Kenya.

All she wanted to know is why her son had to die so painfully, but the suspect sat quietly on the damp forest floor unable to face her.

Gideon Kang’ethe, a Standard Six pupil at Kirigu Primary School in Karatina, Nyeri County, was reported missing last Saturday.

Felista Waithera weeps on her knees after the body of her 11-year-old son was found in a shallow grave inside Mt Kenya Forest in Nyeri on September 27, 2019. PHOTO | NICHOLAS KOMU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

With the discovery of his body, the case has now turned into a homicide and police believe Mr Muriuki killed the boy as payback for being dumped by his mother.

“This is murder. The mother of the boy was a girlfriend of the suspect. She had decided to leave him and we suspect he killed the boy as revenge,” Mathira East Sub-County Police Commander James Barasa told the Nation Friday.